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The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

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Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#161

Post by Avshalom »

AlexandrB wrote: post #127
jnovek wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Social Model of disability The best way I’ve heard this articulated is: Under the medical model, disabled individuals are expected to change their behavior to accommodate (fit on with) society. We ask people whose lives are already more difficult than average to do additional work. Under the social model, we ask all able-bodied people to accommodate disabled individuals instead. Further, the social model says t…

> Under the social model, we ask all able-bodied people to accommodate disabled individuals instead. This sounds good in the abstract, but the devil is in the details. What specific accommodation is being asked for? What counts as a disability? For example, should I simply have to ignore angry outbursts directed at me and my coworkers from someone with oppositional defiance disorder[1]? Am I supposed to take someone'…

I mean you kinda are just expected to ignore angry outbursts directed at you from anyone. That's not even about disability, it's just part of the social contract that you don't start throwing blows when people yell at you.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#162

Post by devinprater »

Totally blind person. I once had this bright idea that the blind community could fix Linux into our perfect platform. I don't care all that much anymore about anything being fixed, foss or not. FOSS is everyone scratching their own itch, and if a developer who can see creates a program that scratches his itch but isn't accessible, but his itch is scratched, why would he then spend time fixing it up for the one blind Linux user that made an issue on Github about it?

For non-FOSS products, it's even worse. There is no way to tell Amazon that, for the past several months, their library view for Kindle on iOS was inaccessible to VoiceOver, with the books having no accessibility label, and the only way one can tell what book they're about to open is through VoiceOver's tiny on-device image describer model. Of course, in iOS 27 (beta currently) this is improved, but it shouldn't have to be. The last few versions of Kindle has begun fixing this, but last time I tried, about a week ago, it could easily break even just by my scrolling the view a few times.

So I don't even bother anymore. If Google can stand having poor Braille support on Android, fine, I'll use an iPhone. If Apple can stand having awful Google Docs support, which I use at work, on MacOS, I'll use Windows or even Linux where it works fine. If an image isn't described, I will put it through AI. If a page doesn't work well with a screen reader, I'll send it through AI too. If I want to play a video game where 99% of them do not have spoken menus, but I can enjoy the actual gameplay, I'll ask AI which menu option I'm on.

I've come to feel that life is so miserable when I and only a few others fight and fight for accessibility. If it works, it only works for a moment. So I just lean on AI because it can "see" a lot better than I can. Besides, people have used AI to make accessibility mods for Final Fantasy 1 through 6, the pixel-remaster versions. So when terminally angry people come at me for my use of AI, I just don't care anymore. Let them go blind and see how it feels.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#163

Post by zaptheimpaler »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #6

While I can understand the frustration and the author makes some good points, a lot of the anger feels oddly misplaced. Yes, engineer types want to solve problems with inventions rather than overhauling the entire nation's infrastructure. Maybe, just maybe, that's because inventing something is actually within their grasp, whereas wholesale replacing every civil engineer and architect in the country isn't? Or replaci…

This is so true and I see this pattern constantly all over the west:

There is some horrible problem that was created by the government or needs government intervention to fundamentally solve. The idea of the government being effective or useful in any way is so distant that it doesn't even register as a possibility. The government doesn't even register as a valid target to blame or locus of change anymore, so it never even enters the conversation. Instead, the next proximate cause is blamed and the anger is directed to them.

Recently - a teacher made a private joke on Snapchat expressing frustration about her workday. Snapchat automatically sent the message to the police and the police pulled up an hour later to the school and arrested her. She wasn't charged thankfully. The response on reddit is "FUCK SNAPCHAT" even though we know all communication platforms are being monitored by the government and are no doubt strong-armed into doing this by the government. Even the potential solutions being discussed are only finding and using E2EE communication platforms not policy change, because that's not in the window of possibility.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#164

Post by inigyou »

my123 wrote: post #156
inigyou wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if investors poured 9 billion into making light rail cheaper, and then 1 billion into light rail? Where would we be then? Other countries don't spend 2 billion dollars a mile. Hire the best engineers from Europe and Asia.

A big chunk of the problem is planning/political: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Line_(Maryland) > A March 2025 report by the Maryland comptroller's office found that permitting and legal fees for the project, originally budgeted at $6 million, had actually consumed roughly $800 million, thanks to two lawsuits and the contract renegotiations Better tech cannot solve that on its own, the problem is not even ther…

That's still only 3% of the money per track length that we're talking about here.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#165

Post by automatic6131 »

jnovek wrote: post #113
the_other wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's both "the entire nation's infrastructure." and not that. What I mean is... many cases are individual: the ramp for that library; the door knobs/handles in that office; the floor indicators in this lift/elevator; the audio announcements (or lack of) on the busses/trains; the small print on contracts; live subtitling at the theatre; the checkout button on this web site; the checkout button on that website. You get…

> the Social Model of disability The best way I’ve heard this articulated is: Under the medical model, disabled individuals are expected to change their behavior to accommodate (fit on with) society. We ask people whose lives are already more difficult than average to do additional work. Under the social model, we ask all able-bodied people to accommodate disabled individuals instead. Further, the social model says t…

I support the medical model then, disabled people who can't work should, ought, to be among the poorest in society, just above the people that can work but don't. Because some people have to be the relatively poor compared to the rest (in absolute terms though: you are richer than almost anyone alive in year 800 CE so not starving poor nor barely surviving poor) and so, who should be? Should the able working be poorer than a disabled person doing less work? The same work?

And why should disabled people be able to craft policy that will be funded largely by the abled? In order to have legitimacy of a policy, you need to involve the people that will pay for it.

The social model is non-sensical, it's unfair, and it cloaks its unfairness in the language of social justice which it doesn't deserve to. There are better forms of advocacy.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#166

Post by Vinnl »

PaulHoule wrote: post #110
ashleyn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great deal of changes proposed to make disabled peoples' lives easier end up having many fringe benefits for the non-disabled. The classic example is strollers or hand trucks going up the little dip on the sidewalk rather than having to lug them over an enormous curb. The cost argument starts looking weak when you observe there's always billions of dollars shaken from magical couch cushions whenever it's time to wa…

In terms of the web two of the greatest things we could do for accessibility: (1) eliminate GDPR pop-ups (and all pop-ups and senseless modal dialogs) and (2) eliminate cloudflare harassment, ReCAPTCHA harassment and anubis harassment. Any of those things should be an immediate F rank for WCAG.

For 1: https://killthecookiebanner.eu/

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#168

Post by Dylan16807 »

Every time I see someone complain about the idea of these fancy wheelchairs as a terrible distraction I think of Michael Kaplan's blog, Sorting It All Out. He had many good things to say about the iBot wheelchair and he was devastated when it got discontinued in 2009 (looks like it's back more recently).

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#169

Post by coryrc »

the_other wrote: post #44
TulliusCicero wrote: post #6

While I can understand the frustration and the author makes some good points, a lot of the anger feels oddly misplaced. Yes, engineer types want to solve problems with inventions rather than overhauling the entire nation's infrastructure. Maybe, just maybe, that's because inventing something is actually within their grasp, whereas wholesale replacing every civil engineer and architect in the country isn't? Or replaci…

It's both "the entire nation's infrastructure." and not that. What I mean is... many cases are individual: the ramp for that library; the door knobs/handles in that office; the floor indicators in this lift/elevator; the audio announcements (or lack of) on the busses/trains; the small print on contracts; live subtitling at the theatre; the checkout button on this web site; the checkout button on that website. You get…

Another way to look at the social model is kids playing in neighborhoods. It's not unsafe to walk from one place to another because of lousy sidewalks or excessive leaves: it's the roads we put between any place they want to go. This might've been tolerable when each household only had 1 car and it was gone all day, but not now that everybody has a RAM Child-squasher 2500. In my neighborhood the sidewalks also just... end randomly, would be awful to live here and be blind. Would be a lot better to be blind if you weren't a misstep away from getting run over.

Re: The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and You

#170

Post by fatbird »

automatic6131 wrote: post #165
jnovek wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Social Model of disability The best way I’ve heard this articulated is: Under the medical model, disabled individuals are expected to change their behavior to accommodate (fit on with) society. We ask people whose lives are already more difficult than average to do additional work. Under the social model, we ask all able-bodied people to accommodate disabled individuals instead. Further, the social model says t…

I support the medical model then, disabled people who can't work should, ought, to be among the poorest in society, just above the people that can work but don't. Because some people have to be the relatively poor compared to the rest (in absolute terms though: you are richer than almost anyone alive in year 800 CE so not starving poor nor barely surviving poor) and so, who should be? Should the able working be poore…

May you someday experience the same lack of empathy you're broadcasting here.
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